by Gary Paulsen
Still, he thought, looking at the mound—it would be different tonight. Much different.
Chapter Nineteen
HE SPENT part of the afternoon cleaning up the camp—he wished he had a hose to clean the mud out of the wagon—and then he rested. The whole night chasing coyotes, the blow he’d taken from the board, and the work of getting the wagon out and clean had exhausted him.
In late afternoon he lay out on his sleeping bag on the ground in the warm sun and lay back to take a nap. He went out like a light.
It was dark when he awakened, dark and cool enough so he could see his breath. The moon was just showing over the eastern rim of the opening to the valley. In his sleep he had pulled the bag over himself and he wanted to close his eyes again and snuggle into the warm bag.
But he heard noise—sheep bleating, running—out on the far side of the herd and knew they were back. The coyotes were there. He couldn’t be certain how long they’d been back but the noise snapped him out of the lazy feeling and he jammed his feet into his boots and stood.
He’d tied Spud to the picket rope before sleeping—he would never be without a horse near again—and he bridled and saddled him in less than a minute. He was glad it was Spud because Speck was jumpy when a gun went off. Spud didn’t care if you shot right over his head.
There was an empty rifle scabbard tied under the right stirrup of the saddle but he didn’t use it. Instead he made certain the rifle was loaded and swung onto Spud and rode with the rifle resting across the saddle.
He let Spud head for the noise on his own and tied a knot in the two reins so they would hang up on the saddle horn and free his hands for the rifle.
It did not take long to get to the trouble. The coyotes were hitting in three places at the same time. The lack of reaction the night before had made them brave, almost cocky, and one of them—a large male—stopped in the moonlight, actually holding a jerking lamb by the back leg, and merely watched as John moved toward him on Spud.
John stopped and raised the rifle. For a second everything hung still, the coyote looking at him, holding the jerking lamb who was bleating for its mother, the horse stopped, little jets of steam from John’s breath in the cool night air and he almost didn’t shoot.
It was beautiful, too beautiful to end. There would be a crash and then an end to the coyote, an end to the animal standing there. In some way that bothered him. To end an animal, end the life.
But he would shoot, and he knew it. If he did not end the coyote, the coyote would end the lamb. It was that choice.
He squeezed the trigger.
The rifle was thundering—enormously loud in the night. Spud jumped sideways and in the glare from the fireball coming out the end of the gun John saw that he had held right. He could not see the sights on the rifle but his father had told him to always hold low at night, that people tended to shoot over things in the dark, and John had held on the low edge of the coyote’s chest.
The coyote had been hit in the center of the chest and was dead instantly. But it wasn’t over. In the half second before John squeezed the trigger the lamb had pulled and the coyote had pulled back and the lamb had been yanked around in front of the coyote. The bullet had gone through the neck of the lamb before killing the coyote and it flopped down on top of the dead coyote.
“No.”
John dismounted and ran to the bodies hoping that it hadn’t been as bad as it seemed, that maybe the lamb was just stunned.
But it was dead.
He pulled the lamb from the coyote, carried it off to the side. The mother nudged it with her nose and tried to get it up, bleating in small noises.
“I’m sorry,” John said. “I didn’t mean it.…”
Stupid, he thought—stupid. To hesitate. It was the hesitation that had caused the trouble. That half a second of hold let the lamb come around.
But he knew it was more. It was all of it. It was the gun, the killing that caused it. It was wrong, felt wrong, but there was no way around it.
If the sheep were to live, the coyotes had to die.
It was like a law in mathematics. Sheep and coyotes could not be together.
He took the rope from his saddle and looped the noose around the coyote’s neck and used Spud—who was half spooky to be dragging a dead coyote around in the dark—to pull the body of the coyote off into the dark brush and then in a large circle around the herd.
Some ranchers hung the bodies of coyotes on fence posts and let them mummify there, and swore that it helped keep others away. John couldn’t bring himself to leave the body around but he thought the dead smell might help and after he’d circled the entire herd he pulled the body into some brush and buried it in a shallow trench, covering it with sticks and rocks.
He carried the body of the lamb off, heeling Spud in a run to leave the following ewe behind, and buried it on the far side of the streambed in some rocks. The coyotes would get it, he knew, but the rocks might keep them away for a time.
Then he moved back to the herd. He rode around them twice slowly and found to his surprise that all the coyotes had gone, vanished. He thought they would stay even with one gone but apparently the sound of the rifle had done the trick.
After the second round he sat still for a time, watching the sheep in the moonlight.
It’s always been like this, he thought. For so long nobody can really remember there have been people watching sheep and protecting them, just like this, in the moonlight.
It was in the Bible. The whole thing about Christmas. That night there were shepherds watching their sheep, close to two thousand years ago.
The same moon. The same stars. The same kind of animal. He wondered if they had dogs and thought they must have. They couldn’t have worked sheep without dogs, he thought, then wondered if they had dogs why dogs hadn’t come into the story of Christmas. That whole business should have dogs in it.…
He was dozing before he knew it—sitting in the saddle asleep, the rifle across his lap, Spud’s head hanging down while he caught a nap as well.
John awakened some time later. He had no idea how long he’d slept. It was still dark and the sheep were still bedded down and the dogs were still taking care of things and the coyotes were still gone.
He wiggled the reins to awaken Spud, who snapped his head up, as if surprised to find he was standing with somebody on his back.
John guided him quietly around the herd back to camp where he unsaddled and picketed Spud in case he needed him.
Then he crawled in his bag, put the rifle close by, and lay back to count stars until he was asleep again.
Which took less than thirty seconds and the last thing he thought was that it’s always been like this—always just this way.
Chapter Twenty
DAYS WENT BY.
On the second day after he’d shot the coyote John found a long, dry willow stick and started carving notches, one for each day. There had been a calendar in the wagon. Tink had put it on the wall. It showed a pretty blond girl holding a horse by the bridle chewing on a piece of straw and it was dated 1959. So it wouldn’t have been accurate and it didn’t matter anyway since the water had taken it on downstream forever.
He didn’t count the days so much as want to keep track of how many he was spending in the camp and when he had fifteen days cut in the stick he stopped one morning and realized that he didn’t mind it.
None of it.
He didn’t mind being alone. Or not alone, but with the dogs and the sheep and the mountains, as Tink would say it. He had at first missed sound—voices, talking, other people, but it wore away in some manner and now he didn’t mind so much.
Birds sang in the morning, the sound of the water running by in the creek was almost like music, and he found himself listening more, hearing more. It was almost as if he was waiting to hear something new, waiting to see something different.
And things had definitely changed around the camp.
He imagined himself to be his great-gran
dfather, or how he thought the old man must have been, and he tried to do everything the way he thought the old man would have done it.
When he did something, he did it to last and did it right. He set the wagon up well away from the stream, even farther than he had it when he first pulled it out of the water, and he put rocks under the wheels so it couldn’t move.
He relashed the tarp to the wagon top, stretched it taut, and tied it so the wind couldn’t come through.
The inside of the wagon had been a shambles. The water had gutted it, taking even the iron stove nearly out the door. He found all the parts and used a smooth stone to pound the worst dents out of the chimney and by the third night he had a cheerful fire going inside to cut the chill of the night air.
The lantern had been tangled in the tarp and was not broken. And the five-gallon container of kerosene had been caught up on a snag by the handle so he had plenty of light.
Within a week the inside of the wagon looked almost orderly. The food was stacked in neat rows—still by guess because all the labels were gone—and the bunk was back in place with the mattress dried, the sleeping bag in a neat roll unless he was airing it outside or getting ready to sleep.
At night the rifle was next to the bed—though the coyotes had not returned—and the last thing he did before going to bed was collect dry kindling, small dry sticks of pine or aspen from the stand of trees along the stream, to make a fire in the morning. These he would put beneath the bed and the first thing in the morning he would reach over, still inside the bag, put the wood in the stove over a small pile of shavings, light the fire and heat coffee in a saucepan to have when he got up.
Coffee.
He smiled when he thought of it. It wasn’t real coffee but hot water with a small bit of instant coffee in it, just for color and a tiny amount of flavor.
He didn’t like it, didn’t really even want it, and certainly didn’t need it—but it fit the mornings in some way. So he would put his feet down in his boots and take his cup of “coffee” to the door and sit on the steps and watch the morning start.
Probably, he thought one morning, just like Tink. And he worried that he was becoming a fourteen-year-old, old man. It stayed in his mind for a couple of days but work soon took its place.
And there was plenty of work.
The dogs could herd the sheep, and run the herd, but when problems occurred they came to John.
The rocks tore their feet up at first. It wasn’t that there were major wounds—not after the first time. But their feet would get scuffed and rescuffed in the sharp shale on the sides of the valley until they seemed to be running on raw hamburger.
There was no way to heal them while they were running and no way they would stay in camp unless they were forced to stay. What he finally did was work a roster and two dogs would work the herd—a male and a female working in teams—while he tied the other two to the wagon with bits of rope. He would rub ointment on the feet of the two who were “resting” by the wagon—they hated it and wanted to be with the herd—and it worked to switch dogs every two days. Their feet healed amazingly fast and by the second day they were tough and pliable enough to run.
Which meant the sheep had to be herded by only two dogs.
Sheep, he thought, lived up to their reputation of not being terribly smart. Two dogs were not enough to move them when the grass began to get chewed down in a particular spot—which took only hours. The outside edges of the flock would move but that often meant that the inside area would only have prechewed grass to nibble on and it wasn’t as good as the fresh, longer grass. And they wouldn’t move on their own but would just stay in the center of the herd, eating the poor grass.
And so they had to be moved.
But two dogs couldn’t quite get it done. The sheep would start to move, then filter back around the dogs and go to nibbling again.
John would take Speck or Spud—whichever horse was on duty that day—and ride up to help the dogs. He would work back and forth across the rear of the herd and yell and wave his arms to get them going.
“Huh! Huh!” He made a low, guttural sound, almost a bark, and by the tenth day he noticed that the sheep were maybe a little smarter than he thought.
They watched him and if they saw him riding up from the wagon and the dogs started to move them they would take off on their own before John actually rode close enough to make them move.
The next time he tried it he just saddled the horse and climbed into the saddle and yelled “Huh!” without leaving the camp area.
The sheep moved, or started to move, and the dogs kept them going until they were all in new grass. And the day after that John didn’t saddle up but just walked to the edge of the camp and waved his arms and yelled.
And it worked.
They looked like a huge gray carpet sliding sideways.
“Huh! Huh!”
And they slid sideways on the side of the valley wall, fully half a mile from John, and then Billy and Jenny, the two dogs working the herd, kept them moving until nearly all the sheep were in new grass.
“Like magic,” John said. Four days later he noticed that they started to move before he yelled and he realized they were responding to his arm movements. The next morning when it was time to move them to new grass he merely walked to the side of the camp, faced the sheep, and waved his arm.
Over they went.
Six thousand sheep and lambs, one wave.
“Tink must have known this,” he said, watching them move. “And he never said a word.…”
There were many things his father, Cawley, or Tink had not told him. It wasn’t that they were holding back on him so much as he hadn’t asked and they might not have known how to say things if he had asked.
Everything was so beautiful it seemed to be not real, almost a movie. He had always had what he called “pretty country” around him. Raised on the Barron ranch made it automatic.
But it was different here.
Down on the ranch there was outside interference. Man-made things were always around. And he liked them, and thought some of them were nice to look at. His saddle, for instance—something about the deep, rich brown of the oiled leather made it seem that he could see down inside it.
But here it was all … clean, clear. Just beauty. The mountains rose on both sides and at the far end of the valley, just shot up, and always looked different. He could look at them for ten minutes, look down, take a step, take a breath and look again and they were all different, all new.
Clouds, high giants of white, slashing storms—they were always new and changed while he watched and their beauty matched the mountains.
Matched all of it.
By the end of three weeks things had reversed and he decided one afternoon to try and find what wasn’t beautiful.
He was sitting on the side of the stream and had his pants rolled up and his bare feet in the water and he looked around and thought of the last three weeks and tried to think of something that wasn’t beautiful.
And he couldn’t.
Maybe the coyotes, the one that grabbed the lamb—but that was part of it as well, part of the beauty. Even that.
His toes.
He looked down at his toes and smiled and nodded.
His big toes were ugly.
Really ugly.
In all of this, he thought, in all of this country it’s my big toes. I’ve got the ugliest big toes in the world.
He wiggled them and slammed his feet together like a seal flapping its flippers and lay back and laughed until Jenny—Jenny and Pete were tied to the wagon for their foot-off day—looked at him and whined, thinking he was crazy.
“It’s my toes,” he said, turning to her. Pete wagged his tail but Jenny studied his face. “They’re ugly. Man, I’ve got ugly toes.”
And, of course, he thought, they didn’t get it. Dogs don’t think about ugly toes. And that set him off again and for the rest of the day, every time he looked down and saw his boots he would think of
his toes and smile.
That night the bear hit and he didn’t think he would ever smile again.
Chapter Twenty-one
HE HAD no idea what it was when he heard the noise and rolled out of the bunk.
He was ready now, always ready to hit the ground running. His feet dropped into the tops of his boots and he pulled them on—he didn’t take time for socks—and his left hand automatically grabbed the rifle and he was at the door and outside before his mind really had time to kick into gear.
There was no moon and it was the middle of the night. Flashlight, he thought—I should have a flashlight. He thought momentarily of taking time to light the lantern but decided it would take too long.
Noise.
Something had awakened him. What?
There. It was high in the herd. His eyes were already accustomed to the darkness and in the faint light provided by the stars he could see the sheep up on the side of the valley.
Something was in them. They were scattering and running in all directions and he thought for a moment it was the coyotes, that they had come back.
Then he heard a new sound. A bellowed growl—very deep, guttural, almost human, if a human could get low enough.
On top of the growl he heard a scream of pain from one of the dogs and he was on Speck and riding, bareback, the rifle in one hand and his other tangled in the mane to hang on.
He didn’t have time to bridle her and he steered with his knees at first. But she knew probably better than he did where she had to go and inside three leaps she was moving at a lined-out full gallop.
John let himself move with her, felt her slide over the ground.
It was too dark to see anything but shapes. The light color of the wool on the sheep made them relatively easy to see, and the white patches on the dogs made them show a bit. He saw them running, moving back and forth, trying to get at something but whatever it was did not show until he was nearly upon it.
It was a black bear, still down on all fours, swinging around to hit at the dogs. There were three dogs up and trying to dash in and snap the bear on the flank. One dog was down and off to the side—John could just see it against the ground.
